Irreversible Entanglements - Open The Gates (November 12, 2021 International Anthem)

Irreversible Entanglements’ third full-length album OPEN THE GATES is ethereal shards of jagged onyx, a melancholic exploration of the post-colonial debris that surrounds us. Let’s watch and listen, as this platter snakes through the sandy ashes of possible histories, dialogs with a nervous present, and asks to be birthed into a holographic new future. “Together in holy sound!” the band stitches patient anthems out of atmosphere. Pulling from a wider sonic vocabulary than on previous excursions, the agit-jazz found here is simultaneously pre- and post-apocalypse, as bass lurches in a tranced-out loop, horns are up in the track grooves like poltergeists playing in the streets, poetry cascades like a warrior call at a satsang, the drums both wild and refined pulse with uhuru-heart cadence. This is Irreversible Entanglements on new ground; same as the old ground.

And we need it now – the universe was awash in the sickly static veneer of anti-cosmos, of anti-nation; the halls were emptied, our shadows echoing and staining the walls of our abandoned oases – so we poured out into 2020’s wild streets. The ghosts of our labor danced around the sickness as we set fire to our old ways of thinking and moving, as we set fire to cop cars and bashed in the windows of our own rising disenfranchisement. “Open the gates!” we shouted, blessed be – we need it now!

Here come Irreversible Entanglements – Luke Stewart, the high priest on bass; Aquiles Navarro, the electric universe in human form on trumpet; Keir Neuringer, the cosmologist with the siren sound on sax; Tcheser Holmes, the griot, the myth-maker on drums; and Camae Ayewa, the Moor mother with an empyrean pen game – on this new disc with their fierce aural tectonics shifting the earth, their watery post-pangea as dirge, their punk rock ethos and crash and bang polyrhythmic super-sonic sound synesthesia in the form of OPEN THE GATES – here it comes, my Brothas and Sistas, here it comes.

1. Open the Gates

2. Keys to Creation

3. Lágrimas Del Mar

4. Storm Came Twice

5. Water Meditation

6. Six Sounds

7. The Port Remembers

Camae Ayewa - voice, synth

Keir Neuringer - saxophone, synth, percussion

Aquiles Navarro - trumpet, synth

Luke Stewart - double bass, bass guitar

Tcheser Holmes - drums, percussion

Recorded on January 5th, 2021, at Rittenhouse Soundworks, Philadelphia. Mixed in April, 2021, at International Anthem Studios, Chicago. Mastered in May, 2021, at Elysian Masters, Los Angeles.

Produced by: Camae Ayewa, Keir Neuringer, Aquiles Navarro, Luke Stewart, and Tcheser Holmes.

Recorded by: Michael Richelle.

Mixed by: Dave Vettraino.

Mastered by: Dave Cooley.

Cover Photo by: Cyrus Moussavi.

Back Cover & Liner Photos by: Bob Sweeney.

Liner Notes by: Alex Smith.

Design & Layout by: Craig Hansen.

Executive Production by: Scott McNiece & David Allen

PRE-ORDER

The Eric Plaks Trio - Within and After (September 2021)

Bomb Cyclone: Within and After

for Eric Plaks …

Music to step to / made by

this trio right here / and now;

they did the do for joyful time

the time we’re in / they’re in.

The lyrical slides

into percussive swing

led by ivory keys, double bass,

percussive everything.

Each measure finds the time

to cast aside the news, the rumors

that brush the cheeks of babes

and oldsters too.

Conjure up heroes of Free Jazz /

the New Music

honed from the flesh of Monsters:

The Tradition that sends in this music.

A trio, a transport away

from all the gossip

that scrapes along the chalkboard,

where instead this music prefers to glide.

- Barry Wallenstein

About the Music

1. Theme 31 – So-Called Bomb Cyclone (for Jorge Sylvester) – On a January day last year (2018), the New York area forecast called for an extreme weather event which never quite transpired – the piece is an E-flat minor groove with a more serene B-section about 4 minutes in (there is a return to the A section at the very end).

2. Theme 26 – Simplicity (for Barry Wallenstein) – Trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and I wrote this one when we appeared with Barry to accompany his poem of the same name at one of his always-packed gigs at Cornelia Street Café (of blessed memory). The form is an ever-increasing chain of notes selected from the 12 tones without repeating.

3. Theme 28 – H.R. 40 (for William Parker) – This is a march. H.R. 40 is the U.S. House Resolution to study the question of slavery reparations.

4. Theme 29 – Throw Your Boxes In The River - This piece represents a voyage down a river (maybe the Amazon as in the movie that inspired it, The Embrace of The Serpent) after one has jettisoned the trappings of “society”. It has written material at the start but then a deliberate decision not to return but rather to let the waters carry you where they will.

5. Theme 27 - For Anthony Braxton – I should really dedicate this one to outstanding bassist Sean Conly who played this through with me when I thought it was a mess that needed cutting and he told me to keep it all. The whole complex A section repeats once and then the improvisation expands upon the snippets that make the piece.

6. Petal Tune (Trio Improv) – Breathe, inhale, enjoy the trio opening out with no pre-set form.

7. Strolling With Tcheser (Duo Improv) – It’s been four years of playing with Tcheser on his returns to NY from various world tours with Irreversible Entanglements, but it was like this from the very first time! What an honor and a pleasure.

8. Theme 32 – For Horace Tapscott – This piece is dedicated to a pianist who doesn’t get enough recognition in the jazz world, the LA legend Horace Tapscott, a truly unique piano stylist, composer, and bandleader. The piece is an AABA in homage.

9. This Nearly Was Mine – For Cecil Taylor – A Rogers and Hamerstein hit from the musical South Pacific, this piece is soupy enough in its original version that you might think Taylor was being ironic or provocative when he chose to make it one of the few standards he ever recorded in 1960 on The World of Cecil Taylor (Candid Records), but he insisted that he simply loved the tune that’s all. I was lucky enough to meet and interview The Maestro several times when I was 20 and have benefited greatly from that period of direct interaction with him, as well as collecting and listening to all the music through the decades. Taylor passed on April 5, 2018 and this one’s for him. 

Tracks 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 by Eric Plaks

Track 4 by Eric Plaks and Tcheser Holmes

Track 6 by Eric Plaks and Aquiles Navarro

Track 9 by Rogers and Hamerstein

Recorded August 16, 2018 at Tedesco Studios, Paramus, NJ

Recorded and Mixed by Tom Tedesco

Mastered by Jonathan Goldberger

PREORDER